Toward Automatic Distribution

This paper considers the problem of distributing data and code among the processors of a distributed memory supercomputer. Provided that the source program is amenable to detailed dataflow analysis, one may determine a placement function by an incremental analogue of Gaussian elimination. Such a function completely characterizes the distribution by giving the identity of the virtual processor on which each elementary calculation is done. One has then to “realize” the virtual processors on the PE. The resulting structure satisfies the “owner computes” rule and is reminiscent of two-level distribution schemes, like HPF’s [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] directives, or the CM-2 virtual processor system.